Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

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Reviews

'This enticing seventh (and final) volume of Clementi's works for solo piano is a notable achievement on several levels. The same team … have combined to produce no fewer than 14 CDs of remarkably uniform quality, insight and interest in a mere 4 years … there are over 152 minutes of music on the present discs, much of it demanding. How Shelley manages to absorb it all and then convince you that he has been playing it all his life with his characteristic elegance and dexterity is a gift given to few. Such an eminent composer deserves no less' (Gramophone)

Introduction

Clementi’s final two Capriccios Op 47 are clearly ‘professional’ music: ambitious, dramatic, radically experimental, often determinedly chromatic, they show the septuagenarian composer still at work in the forefront of the most modern keyboard style. Each of the two Capriccios (in E minor and C major) consists of two fast movements, in every case preceded by a sizable Adagio introduction. These Adagios, with their elaborate melodic ornament and luxuriant chromaticism, at points may remind us of piano music from a dozen years later: Chopin, perhaps, or the young Liszt. The first Adagio of the C major Capriccio has a 5/4 time signature—perhaps the first occurrence of such a radically experimental metrical arrangement. The initial fast movements in each Capriccio are both of the appassionato type, with dramatic, agitated themes, and laden with chromatic motion and enharmonic shifts. The two finales are rather different: their largely straightforward construction and diatonic harmonies have a retrospective air, as if Clementi were for a moment indulging in a backward glance at his own musical past.